Stone Roses quotes

With The Stone Roses officially getting back together for a new tour, it’s just like 1989 all over again, but without the constant threat of hearing Phil Collins on the radio.

We’re still playing Fool’s Gold loudly in the office to celebrate and we’ve also assembled 20 of their finest quotes, including all the ones about them never getting back together…

(Images: Rex Features)

Stone Roses

"There's more chance of me re-forming Happy Mondays than the Stone Roses."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"I'm the only person who could bring it back together again. Ian knows how to craft a tune, John knows how to craft a tune. I don't know if any of us are powerful without each other. The magic was the power of four."

Mani

Stone Roses

"I don’t think no one’s touched us. I don’t want to be George Best, ‘cause you know George Best used to slag everybody off. But I don’t think anyone’s touched the Roses, the heights that we reached musically."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"We want to be the first band to play on the moon - we want to be bigger than the Beatles."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"No wonder that LP [The Stone Roses] sounds so mellow and laidback. We were constantly stoned to f***. Hot knives and trips were the order of the day."

Mani

Stone Roses

"British empire? A bunch of public schoolboys playing about!"

John Squire

Stone Roses

"Anything that can break the music industry up, I'm supporting it."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"I’ve got nothing to prove. Done it all. I’ve been back everywhere that the Roses went, and more. No, got nothing to prove to nobody."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"I hate Blur, Oasis are just repeating themselves with every song, Pulp are a bunch of pussies. There's a lot of people getting away with it at the moment, put it that way."

Mani

Stone Roses

"So many twats about. Tense people who make money for the sake of it, and fuck people over in the process. That's the main problem."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"You can't say ecstasy hasn't done some good. But some people take it to extremes. Fook that! You've got to stay conscious or you're just like some old hippie, right?"

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"What do I plan to be doing in 10 years' time? Lying in a hammock drinking mango juice. Wanking."

John Squire

Stone Roses

"Everybody's got to feel despair. You can't be eternally happy, or if you were you probably wouldn't know it cos you'd have nothing to contrast it with. You've got to be depressed so that one day you can go up."

John Squire

Stone Roses

"We wrote most of the first album in the few weeks after inking the deal [with Silverstone Records], because we'd blagged the record company. We told Silverstone that we had about 30 or 40 songs, but we only had about eight."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"You do a gig in London and you get people from Coventry or Southampton chanting 'Manchester! Manchester!' But there are a lot of wankers in Manchester."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"I also prefer my own solo music to Roses’ music."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"[on a reunion]... when Man City wins the cup and a UFO is gonna hover over Wembley and beam down Elvis riding a unicorn with a letter written in John Squire's blood saying 'I'm sorry, Ian'"

Mani

Stone Roses

“Sometimes the kids say things like, ‘Dad, you were in the Rolling Stones, weren’t you?’”

John Squire

Stone Roses

"If I Went Back, And Did Anything Differently, I Wouldn’t Have Sung Squire’s Songs For Him..."

Ian Brown

Stone Roses

"They don't deserve us. We'll go anywhere really, but America doesn't really deserve us, they're fuckin wankers."

Mani